Max Evans

The western is all but gone, but the West lives on. The classic westerns of cattle drives and rustlers, saloons with swinging doors, dancing girls, a tinkling piano and high-stakes card games, of ruthless land barons and of mysterious lone strangers showing up in town bent on revenge survive in happy memory--and in reruns on the lesser channels.

WHEN men take to the road in books and movies, their experiences are often celebrated as journeys of exploration and conquest, self-discovery and self-perfection. But when the women in "Thelma & Louise" do the same, they are depicted as runaways and desperadoes who end up dead.

Max Evans has received mixed critical acclaim for his many published works. His classic Western "The Rounders" was made into a movie starring Henry Fonda and Glenn Ford. A southwestern native and Albuquerque resident, he has recently been awarded the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts for his work. Evans' latest is certainly a novel of broader scope, with developed literary devices and fuller characterization than in the past, yet it is still popular and light.

The western is all but gone, but the West lives on. The classic westerns of cattle drives and rustlers, saloons with swinging doors, dancing girls, a tinkling piano and high-stakes card games, of ruthless land barons and of mysterious lone strangers showing up in town bent on revenge survive in happy memory--and in reruns on the lesser channels.

WHEN men take to the road in books and movies, their experiences are often celebrated as journeys of exploration and conquest, self-discovery and self-perfection. But when the women in "Thelma & Louise" do the same, they are depicted as runaways and desperadoes who end up dead.

Producer-writer-director David E. Peckinpah, 54, nephew of the late director Sam Peckinpah, died of heart failure Sunday in Vancouver, Canada, where he lived with his family, publicist Warren Cowan said. Peckinpah was executive producer of the TV series "Sliders" from 1996 to 1999, "Turks" in 1999 and "Silk Stalkings" in 1991. He was screenwriter on the 1994 film "The Paperboy."

When the Statue of Freedom touched down on the Capitol Plaza shortly after dawn Sunday, a worker climbed a ladder, unhitched a web of protective straps and kissed the bronze goddess on the cheek. A crowd of hundreds cheered as a helicopter crew plucked the statue from the U.S. Capitol dome where it has stood guard for 130 years. Bringing the seven-ton, 19-foot 6-inch statue down from its perch 268 feet above the ground took months of planning.

It was a horse named Old Sorrel that brought Pete Calder and Big Boy Matson together in the bleak, northeastern corner of New Mexico that gives "The Hi-Lo Country" its name. So it's fitting that a shot of Pete sitting cross-legged on Old Sorrel signals early on how this much-anticipated modern western is going to go astray.

The aliens have landed. After a two-year stint building a near-cult status on the WB, "Roswell" begins a new incarnation at 9 tonight on UPN. The young-adult drama with a science-fiction pulse, scripted tonight by executive producer Jason Katims, was cut adrift by the WB (a subsidiary of Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times) in May. UPN President Tom Nunan attributed the problems to lineup shuffling by that network and mismatched lead-ins such as the softer family drama "7th Heaven."

A long-running neighborhood dispute in Sunland that has resulted in accusations of racial discrimination, mail threats and a gunshot attack on one family's house, will be played out later this year in a San Fernando courtroom. Joe Brown, who is white, allegedly fired shots into the home of his black neighbor, Michael Evans, 34, after an argument last year. Brown, facing charges of assault with a deadly weapon, is scheduled to go on trial Nov. 25, authorities said.

Max Evans has received mixed critical acclaim for his many published works. His classic Western "The Rounders" was made into a movie starring Henry Fonda and Glenn Ford. A southwestern native and Albuquerque resident, he has recently been awarded the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts for his work. Evans' latest is certainly a novel of broader scope, with developed literary devices and fuller characterization than in the past, yet it is still popular and light.

Jason Behr, who stars as an extraterrestrial attending high school on Earth in the WB sci-fi series "Roswell," has leased a Sunset Strip-area home for a year at about $3,200 a month. Behr, 26, plays Max Evans in "Roswell," which premiered in the fall. He played a young gay man in the independent film "Rites of Passage" (1999), co-starring Dean Stockwell, and made his feature film debut in "Pleasantville" (1998).

Wind-whipped tumbleweeds spin past the Stead Elementary School north of Reno, giving tangible sense of the continual movement of children enrolling or departing as they follow their families down a Nevada road to another home. Principal Francey Dennis is in another school year with "lots and lots and lots of names to learn." She looks at one child's record: five schools in five years. It is the same at other schools. District Supt.